


speed of light

by EmeraldTulip



Series: two things are infinite [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Eleven | Jane Hopper Has Powers, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Kinda, M/M, Near Future, Post-Canon, Siblings Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Time Loop, Unreliable memory, Will Byers Has Powers, also kinda - Freeform, as a result, idiots to lovers, oh yeah and uh, that too, will isn't the one in the hospital this time thats good right, you dont need to read part 1 to understand this it stands on its own, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 04:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldTulip/pseuds/EmeraldTulip
Summary: The Upside Down is gone, and Will finds himself in a hospital yet again. It's honestly worse that it isn't him in the bed this time.__Will honestly isn’t sure what he’s trying to say.I’m not sure you know what you’re saying,maybe. OrI’m not worth it.“You are,” Mike says, and he squeezes Will’s hand, smoothing out the shaking. “I know that everything got a little… mixed up back there. But I meant what I said. And did.”





	speed of light

**Author's Note:**

> an extension of the byeler plot line in _the theory of relativity_. I just felt that it wasn't resolved. you dont have to read that fic at all for this to make sense by the way!  
enjoy!

Time slips through his fingers as he runs, tripping over seconds and minutes and hours of what is to come and what already has. Mike keeps up with his pace, but every once in a while his movements will turn sluggish, choppy, and Will squeezes his hands into fists and thinks _no, not him._

_Anything else, but not him._

“I’ll catch up!” Mike’s voice rings out, suddenly sounding distant, and Will realizes that something is horribly wrong.

Mike abruptly stumbles over something more concrete than a chronologic blip, tumbling to the ground. In the split second it takes for Will to stop, he’s already ten feet away.

“Go, Will!” Mike yells, his fingers scrabbling at the tree roots as he tries to keep moving. _Keep moving._ “Just listen!”

But _I’ll catch up_ is a lie, because time is already snaking through his bones, mixing up the way Will’s mind perceives him. Mike will never catch up if Will leaves now, thrown into the past or future or some other hell.

So he bolts back, outpacing the shadows nipping at Mike’s heels, yanking up to his feet. “Come on,” he says, feeling the clamminess of Mike’s palm in his, and they run.

“Will, just listen,” Mike gasps again, and his free hand is pressed to his side. “I’m slowing you down, you have to leave me.”

“No.” His throat is tight from lack of oxygen, but also from tears. Something pulses in his fingertips.

Mike goes crashing to the ground again, his hand yanked from Will’s by gravity, and he rolls into a tree. Will is prepared this time, crouching next to him.

“Mike, we gotta go, you gotta get up,” he urges, grasping Mike’s shoulders. “We can’t stop, we have to keep moving—”

Mike’s hand comes away from his ribs, and Will at first doesn’t see the bloodstain spreading across his shirt, just the red on his fingers.

“If I stay,” Mike says, and his voice is astonishingly level despite the cough that fights its way out of him. A spray of blood speckles his lips. “If I stay back here, you’ll get there in time to stop the monster.”

Will can feel his head shaking frantically, _no_. “What if you get—get stuck somewhere else in the timeline? What if I can’t find you?”

“I’ll be fine.” Mike’s gaze is dark and steadfast. “As long as you can beat it, I’m gonna be fine.”

Time stutters and skips again, the ground shifting beneath Will’s knees, and when everything steadies again Mike’s hands are on his face. Will can feel sticky blood on his cheek and he can’t seem to care, but he instinctively knows a moment has been stolen from him. He wishes he knew what Mike had just said.

All he knows is that Mike is bruised and battered, curled behind a tree, and a monster is chasing them. If Will leaves, and it finds Mike, Will loses his best friend. Mike’s unbloodied thumb ineffectively wipes at the grime on Will’s cheek. “Go.”

He thinks Mike may have pushed him away—that, or time has played another trick on him, or perhaps both, because everything twists so fast he gets vertigo and before he can even blink he’s running again.

There’s blood on his mouth. He thinks he remembers an _I love you._

* * *

The doctor almost drops her clipboard at the sight of Joyce Byers practically dragging two sheet-white children into the hospital waiting room. Later, Will is told that her reaction was actually quite measured compared to the ear-splitting shriek she let out when the group of teenagers carried a bloody Mike Wheeler in, all shouting over each other.

For now, however, Will sits hunched over in a chair, waving the staff off from providing any medical assistance other than a glass of water. The blood on his mouth stains the cup, and he tries to ignore the taste of iron. El, who let a doctor take her aside and patch her up, casts a glance at Will, as she returns to the waiting room. He pointedly ignores her.

With the Upside Down in retreat, neither of their powers seems to be functioning as strongly. Nevertheless, El takes Will’s hand, resting it on the arm of the chair. Will doesn’t hear her voice in his head, like he has for the last few weeks, but a wave of _something _washes over him and he somehow understands. She rests her head on his shoulder, not seeming to care about how slimy his clothes are—she is, after all, also disgusting.

Will listens as her breathing evens out, catching his mother’s eyes from her spot in a chair directly opposite him. She’s worried, he can see it, but he can’t bring himself to let the doctors take him away—he needs to be ready as soon as Mike wakes up, he has to.

The waiting room is silent other than the sound of the front desk nurse’s typing. Steve and Robin had taken off an hour before, telling Jonathan to call with any updates. El radioed the Party as soon as they cleared the woods—they’re at the police station with Callahan. Jonathan is with another doctor, trying to explain everything, and Nancy is with Mike. Mike, in his hospital bed.

“Young man,” the nurse says, a wavering note of trepidation in her voice. “You, uh…” She draws a finger across her own eyebrow, and Will suddenly registers the stinging cut on his own face.

“It’s okay,” he tells her, his voice calmer than he thought it would be. “I’ll be fine.” He doesn’t know how he’s so sure, but he passes his hand over the wound and the pain instantly lessens.

“Stop it, Will,” El mumbles, and Will almost jumps.

“What?”

“You’re using the Upside Down,” she says, her eyes still closed, her cheek still pressed into his collar. “I can feel you turning back time. It should be okay, since we destroyed the nexus, but. Don’t take chances.”

He feels his lip twitch, remembering the first time they had a conversation like this. “Don’t be stupid?” he suggests, and El huffs out a laugh.

“Yeah, don’t be stupid.”

“Neither of you are stupid,” their mother pipes up. “Brave, yes. Impulsive, absolutely. But also incredibly smart.”

“Ah, confession time,” Will says, because he wants to hear El’s tired laugh again. “El does all my math homework for me. I write her essays. Our grades wouldn’t even be passing if we did our own work.”

Joyce sighs. “This is not the time or place for this conversation, but we _will_ talk about it later. When we aren’t all covered in blood.”

The nurse at the desk is eyeing them curiously, and Will sends her an innocent, charming smile. She grins back confusedly and returns to her paperwork.

“Do you think he’ll be okay, Mom?” Will asks after a moment. “He’s not _like_ me or El.”

She looks at him. “I hope so, honey. Steve said they brought him here as soon as they found him.”

“He looked awful, Mom,” Will tells her, and he can’t help the raspiness that creeps into his voice. “There was so much blood. And I tried to help him but I didn’t know how, and he made me go—”

“Will,” El says sharply, still leaning into his side. It cuts him off.

His mother lets out a long breath, clearly debating something internally. “I think Mike is strong enough to get through this.”

“Stubborn,” El corrects.

That gets Will to crack a smile, at least. “True.” He sobers up quickly, squeezing El’s fingers. “I just… I don’t want him to die. And… before he made me leave, something happened, but I don’t really know, and I need to talk to him about it, and he’s my best friend and he _can’t_ die.”

“He kissed you,” El says flatly, as if discussing the weather and not her ex-boyfriend and brother. “That wasn’t just ‘something.’”

Will is caught off-guard by her candidness, and his eyes flick from the nurse to his mother. The nurse is intensely staring at the desk, but his mother is looking right at him. She doesn’t look angry.

“Hey,” she holds up her hands after he stares at her for a minute. “You said the blood on your mouth wasn’t yours. Gross, by the way.”

“Mom!” He can’t hold back a blush and covers his face with his hand. He takes a breath, recovering, and looks her in the eye again. “He was barely conscious. What if he doesn’t remember when he wakes up? Everything was so weird anyway, I didn’t even know what had happened and I wasn’t bleeding out!”

“Even if he doesn’t remember,” El mutters into his shoulder, “he still feels the same thing.”

* * *

_He’s allowed two at a time, but he asked for Will._

The nurse’s voice rings in his ears as he hovers outside the door. Nancy, standing next to him, glances at him curiously.

“You okay?” she asks, and Will almost laughs because it’s her brother who almost died. Will’s just _nervous_.

“Yeah.” He cracks a couple of his fingers, still not daring to touch the door handle. “Nancy?”

“Yeah?”

“If I told you I loved him, would you still let me in there?” He tastes blood in his mouth, but it’s not Mike’s anymore—that has been washed away, replaced by the inside of his mouth torn from nervous chewing.

Nancy doesn’t respond for a minute, and Will braces himself. “Why wouldn’t I?” Nancy finally answers. “He wants you in there.”

Will forces the bubble of emotion swelling in his throat down. “If he…”

She looks at him. “I’m not stupid, Will. He’s my brother. I know what he’s like.” She shakes her head. “And I don’t care what our parents say. You’re…” She looks up at the ceiling. “It’s always been about you, you know? Since day one. I don’t even remember what our house was like before Mike brought you over. I don’t remember what _Mike_ was like before you.”

“I guess the Byers have a bit of a thing for Wheelers,” Will jokes weakly, and he’s immensely grateful when Nancy laughs.

“Yeah, well, it’s always been mutual before,” she shrugs. “I don’t think that streak is about to break.” She claps Will on the shoulder. “Now, seriously, get in there. He really wants to see you.”

“Thanks, Nancy,” he says, schooling his face into an expression that isn’t emotionally wrecked, pushing open the door.

It clicks behind him and then the shaking starts, his hands trembling with the pressure of holding back tears. Mike is staring at him from the stark white bed, eyes soft and brown and _alive_.

“Will,” Mike rasps, and even swallowed by the sheets as he is, IV in his arm, so pale he almost blends in with his surroundings—he’s the most beautiful boy Will has ever seen.

“Mike, Jesus,” slips out of Will’s mouth as he stumbles forward, falling into the chair next to Mike’s bed. “You’re okay.”

“Thanks to you,” Mike replies easily, sincerely, and Will almost wants to scream because he got Mike _into_ this mess, he left him behind.

“But I—”

“Will,” Mike says again, firm, and the grit in his voice is gone. “I’m serious.” He flips his hand so it’s palm-up on top of the sheet, and Will hesitantly takes it, tremors and all.

_I don’t want to be reading this wrong,_ he thinks. _I really don’t._

“Don’t be dumb,” Mike laughs, and he eases into a sitting position against the pillows, wincing as he stretches his side. “Your face is so worried, dude, I’m _fine_, and I wanted you to hold my hand.”

“Mike—”

“Almost dying really gets you thinking,” Mike says. “As I’m sure you know.”

He isn’t wrong about that—at least half of Will’s greatest epiphanies have occurred during a near-death experience. But. “I’m not—“

Will honestly isn’t sure what he’s trying to say. _I’m not sure you know what you’re saying,_ maybe. Or _I’m not worth it._

“You are,” Mike says, and he squeezes Will’s hand, smoothing out the shaking. “I know that everything got a little… mixed up back there. But I meant what I said. And did.”

Will honestly and truly doesn’t remember. Time, for him, skipped straight to running from Mike talking, and though he knows it isn’t just wishful thinking that Mike kissed him, he really doesn’t have any context.

“Time… took whatever you said to me,” Will says carefully.

All remaining color drains from Mike’s face. “So you don’t know—I mean, what I said, I—” He goes to pull his hand away, but Will latches on. Mike won’t look at him. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I shouldn’t have just assumed that you—that I could just—“

“Just _what_?” Will says, maybe a little angrily now, because this is all so fucked up and unfair. “Just kiss me? Well you _did_, and I was so worried because I thought you were _dying_, and I’ve been in love with you for years so this was all—”

He gets cut off again, but this time it isn’t with words.

Mike kisses him.

Will flails for a second, startled by the amount of strength Mike has for someone in a hospital bed. He also doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Mike doesn’t move away, though, and Will stops completely panicking, his hands coming to cup Mike’s jaw.

Mike breaks away only when it becomes absolutely necessary to breathe, and Will almost flinches at the intensity and sincerity of his gaze just inches away. “You’re it for me, you know that? That very first day I met you, I knew. I just didn’t _know_. But when you moved, you left, it was like… like—I don’t know, it was almost worse than when you went missing. Because you weren’t with me and it was because you made that choice to leave.”

“I’ve been in love with you since fifth grade,” Will admits, and even though he blushes he delights in the flush it brings to Mike’s pale face. “I just always thought…”

_You wouldn’t like me back. You weren’t queer. You were in love with my sister. You would forget about me eventually._

But Mike drags him in by his neck and kisses him again, Will grasps at his wrists, careful of the IVs, and he’s never been so grateful to be in a hospital.

* * *

(“You were disgusting,” Mike remembers, gathering up a couple of Jonathan’s old pictures, and Will flips him off. “And the room was so clean. You were covered in goo and blood and dirt! It was gross!”

“Excuse me for being worried about you.”

Mike grins cheekily as he tosses the photos into the _Jonathan_ box. “You’re excused.” Will lightly whacks him on the head. “Ow!”

“What’s that?” Will asks, peering at the polaroid Mike’s hands have found themselves on.

Mike shrugs, looking down at it. “I think you took it.” It’s a picture of Mike, after all, and Jonathan famously doesn’t shoot polaroid.

Will tugs it from his grip. “Your first day out of the hospital. I remember this.” He peers down at the envelope the pictures were scattered from, picking up another one. “El took this one of us. Same day.”

Mike blushes even thinking about it. Will had kissed him so hard Mike was afraid he’d have to check himself back into the hospital with how dizzy it made him. And of-fucking-course El captured the moment.

“I like it,” Will decides. “Put it in the box for my dorm.”

Mike frowns. “But if your roommate—”

“If my roommate says anything I’ll tell him my stepdad is a police chief,” Will says, “and then I’ll turn him into a baby.”

“You can’t do that,” Mike says doubtfully, and Will wiggles his fingers playfully.

“I don’t know,” he muses jokingly, “time is a fickle thing.”

Mike laughs and kisses his cheek. “You’re so weird.” He finds the box labeled _Will—UCLA_, seals the envelope, and drops it in. He thinks about the envelope of his own, containing his own letter from UCLA, tucked in his bag in El’s room.

"I love you,” he says, and Will looks up at him.

“Sap,” he accuses, hitting him in the chest with an old stuffed animal, and Mike pouts.

Then Will kisses him, properly, and Mike can’t bring himself to protest.)

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are, as always, appreciated.  
find me on tumblr, my main is [@perseusjaxon](https://perseusjaxon.tumblr.com) and my writing blog is [@lowriting](https://lowriting.tumblr.com)!


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